When White Sugar Won’t Do
When I wrote a Taiwanese cookbook in 2015, I introduced many to the joys of dried baby shrimp, fermented black soybeans, and black vinegar. But I intentionally left out one ingredient from recipes due to its relative inaccessibility in the United States. It was rock sugar, a common sweetening agent in Taiwanese and Chinese kitchens, often melted into teas, tossed into braises, and injecting a touch of sweetness to stir-fries. Instead, I suggested that you could just as well sub in brown or white sugar, in recipes like red-braised pig’s knuckle or three cup chicken. I now regret it.
Sugar, as we all know it in its many forms, is universally bad for you: it rots your teeth, gives you diabetes, takes you up and then crashes you down. And the histor...
